


old testament

by wtfmulder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, MSR from outside perspective, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-01 10:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18333722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfmulder/pseuds/wtfmulder
Summary: AU prompt: Mulder looked scary at the end of Tithonus. How would he treat Ritter if Scully hadn't been okay?





	old testament

Nothing the Academy taught prepared you to live through facing your own mistakes. Looking over Dana — Agent Scully, as she had demanded when the respect between them had crumbled into nothing — Peyton Ritter feared he might actually suffocate, standing frozen at the glass window in front of her ward. **  
**

She was so pale. He’d never seen anyone lose the amount of blood that she did and live to tell the story. The seconds between her breaths lasted forever, each pause begging him to call in a nurse.

Alive, but just barely. She was in hypovolemic shock. The fear was brain damage, the doctor said, but it was too soon to tell.

Agent Scully was the first partner he’d ever had. Kersh had warned him that she was a bit off, prone to insubordination, used to bending rules at the whim of her unstable former partner. All of that had been true. Toward the end of the case he had begun to see her as an impediment to what he saw as an obvious victory. Maybe she just didn’t understand the way they did it in New York. The means of the investigation did not matter so much when it came to keeping the city clean. A criminal was a criminal at the end of the day, and it was his job to put them away. How that happened — didn’t matter. A jury decided who was guilty, not him.

Her fault, said his asshole brain. Ran off without telling anybody, didn’t even bother calling for backup. She moved in on this case like it was hers alone, not thinking to consult him on any of her findings or clue him in on her interactions with Fellig. It was  _his_  fucking case. It was going to be  _the_  case, the one that got him moved up a few floors doing actual investigative work instead of sorting through photos all day in the goddamn records department.

He didn’t believe it. He wanted to believe it, but he knew his life was going to get a whole lot harder, and that his progress in the Bureau would be forever halted. He shot his fucking partner. He barged into a room and fired off his weapon without assessing the situation. Because of him, a brilliant woman was lying incapacitated in a hospital bed, in danger of being heavily disabled for the rest of her life. Fellig’s victims would never get their justice, and yet another crime would remain unsolved.

Because of  _him._

He felt like a child, unable to accept reality for what it was. Nothing in life was supposed to be this hard. He wanted to call his nana. He wanted to cry.

When Fox Mulder showed up, he was relieved that the guy barely noticed he was there. Besides the accidental shoulder check when he flew down the hallway and directly into Scully’s room, Ritter didn’t seem to exist in his mind.

In fact, nothing seemed to exist to him but the woman in that room. He was a real creep, intruding like this, but he couldn’t look away as Agent Mulder stood silently by his comatose partner and took her small, limp hand into his own. If you weren’t paying much attention, if you let your gaze falter for only a minute, you would miss the way his face crumpled up as he stared at her. His features went slack with pain.

He brought her fingers to his lips for a small kiss, then tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. What the hell kind of partnership was this, anyway?

Whatever they meant to each other, it was obviously beyond anything required of them by their duty to the F.B.I. The young agent, sick with guilt, saw them more as a grieving husband and a sickly spouse than two people who worked together.

Figures, he thought. Fucking figures. This was getting worse and worse. His knees weakened.

Christ. He needed some coffee. He needed some food. He needed anything that might stop his hands from shaking. Better to give them a little privacy anyway, he thought. He was about to turn away when Agent Mulder caught his eyes through the window.

His asshole clenched when Mulder dropped Scully’s hand and whipped around to throw himself past the doorway. “Peyton?”

“Fox,” Peyton said, backing up just an inch.

Mulder moved an inch closer, something like a smile on his face. Ritter’s guts roiled. “You call her mother?” He asked.

He thought — he thought the hospital did that. “No,” he said, fighting to not slouch.

A firm hand came down on his shoulder, a poor imitation of a friendly pat. “Come on,” Mulder said. “Rookie mistake. You always call the mother.”

He didn’t even know her mother.

Suddenly they were pacing down the hallway. Mulder was not quite dragging him, but his feet were so heavy his shoes squeaked on the tile. “Better reception downstairs,” the man explained, but Ritter was hardly listening.

They passed the elevator. “Where are we—”

“I like taking the stairs.” Mulder’s hands were on his back now, shoving him along. The hallway lasted forever, but he wanted it to keep going. The closer they came to the exit door the harder his heart pounded.

This was a gallows walk.

Something was going to happen when they got to that door. He no longer had his firearm on him — that was bagged up and taken away as evidence. He had to get the fuck out of this situation, right the fuck now.  
  
“Hey, man — “ he turned around and tried to push Mulder off, but by then they’d arrived at the exist. He reached down, yanked the door open, grabbed Ritter by his shirt, and pulled him forcefully into the stairwell. “What the fuck — “

Mulder shoved him against the wall. The fists around his collar were dangerously close to his throat, knuckles digging into his skin and cutting off his breath. “You were  _taking notes_  on her the entire time,” he shouted. Stars burst beyond Ritter’s eyelids when his head smashed against the wall. What the hell was he talking about? His communication with Deputy Director Kersh? How did he —

“How did you get those?” He wheezed, struggling to pull Mulder off. No luck. “I was told to keep —”

“Who sent you?” The thud of Ritter’s skull against the cinder block wall echoed on every floor. “ _Who sent you_  to separate us?”

Ritter couldn’t speak. His head hurt. He couldn’t breath. Kersh warned him the guy was unhinged, but this was something else. There was death behind the rage in his eyes, like somehow this was the last straw of something Ritter had no fucking way of comprehending.

Mulder loosened his grip, and he heaved air into his lungs and stumbled forward.  _Hit him_ , he begged himself.  _Fucking hit him, kick his ass._

He was paralyzed. He couldn’t bring himself to fight back, even as Mulder dragged his body over to the railing. “No,” he choked. “No, no, no.” He was hoisted up, teetered precariously over the railing, just enough of his weight distributed so that one wrong move would drop him eleven stories.

“You think I won’t do it?” Mulder growled. He shook Ritter by the chest and yelled again: “You think I  _won’t do it?_ ”

“I’m sorry,” Ritter managed. And he was. Sorry to be here, sorry he ever joined the F.B.I.  _“I’m sorry.”_  
  
When his feet hit the ground, his knees buckled and he toppled over.

“I’ll get a nurse,” Mulder grumbled. Ritter didn’t look up as he coughed and sputtered blood out on the cement.

He screamed when a foot collided with his stomach and a voice came close to his ear. “You have a lot to lose, Agent Ritter. You better hope I do, too.”

Ritter waited for the door to close before he forced himself to stand up.


End file.
